Shortlist
Dr Greg Neely
Garvan Institute of Medical Research
Identification and validation of conserved functionally relevant disease genes
Dr Greg Neely hunts for two different sorts of genes—those that cause pain and those that make us more susceptible to heart attacks.
After completing his PhD in cellular immunology at the University of Calgary in Canada in 2004, he joined geneticist Josef Penninger in Austria to look at the genes associated with pain. He helped identify the first ever gene shown to play a role in synaesthesia — the crossing of the senses — by searching the genome of that laboratory workhorse, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster).
Greg now leads a group at the Garvan Institute in Sydney that has already identified about 600 genes in the pain pathway of the flies. By searching our own human genome for similar genes, Greg has been able to identify about 60 new pain genes and 80 new sudden cardiac death genes that we share with the fruit fly. He has already validated two of these genes in mice and is working on verifying more. Greg is overseas at present and is being represented at the awards ceremony by Garvan’s Neuroscience Research Program director Herbert Herzog.
Dr Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Steroid hormone receptor status of mouse mammary stem cells
Marie-Liesse was part of the team at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) that discovered the breast stem cell.
Since then she’s been meticulously unravelling how and why they contribute to the progression of breast cancer. It’s been well-documented that sustained exposure to oestrogen and progesterone is a risk factor for breast cancer.
When French-born Marie-Liesse came to Australia to join WEHI’s breast cancer group in 2004, she found that breast stem cells did not have receptors for those hormones. Yet breast stem cells were still highly sensitive to oestrogen and progesterone. Drugs that exploit one of the pathways she identified in the process are in clinical trials to help maintain bone strength and treat breast cancer that has spread to the bones.
She has now established a new laboratory at WEHI to focus on lung stem cells and their role in cancer, complementing and expanding on her earlier work on breast cancer stem cells and the part they play in spreading cancer. Marie-Liesse is an advocate for keeping women scientists in research. She was a L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellow in 2010 and a delegate to the Women in Science and Engineering Summit in Canberra this year.
Dr Marc Pellegrini
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Promoting immunity to clear chronic overwhelming infection
Dr Marc Pellegriniis a physician turned researcher, whose discoveries about the immune system are being applied to clinical trials of cancer vaccines and treatments for HIV and hepatitis.
As a specialist in infectious diseases, Marc tended to many patients with chronic viral infections like HIV and hepatitis, where the virus tricks the immune system to allow a certain level of infection, so the body never clears it entirely.
Current approaches to curing chronic infections tend to focus on generating a long-lived immune response to the specific disease, but Marc and his colleagues at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) have concentrated instead on how the immune response can be manipulated to fight the infection more effectively.
Marc, who completed his PhD in 2004, took the initiative to look at a cell-signalling hormone called interleukin-7 (IL-7), which is known to play a critical role in immune system development and maintenance. He found that artificial IL-7 can clear an HIV-like chronic infection in mice. This novel approach to a serious clinical problem may soon be complementing existing anti-viral chemotherapy in the very hospitals Marc in which continues to consult.
Dr Radwa Badawy
The University of Melbourne
Studying the pathophysiology of epilepsy
Dr Radwa Badawy teases apart the multiple factors associated with abnormalities of brain excitability in epilepsy.
Radwa received her PhD at The University of Melbourne in 2009, the same year that Brain published her work showing that cortical excitability is abnormal many hours before seizure onset, and for a period of time after.
She later showed using transcranial magnetic stimulation that effective drug treatment in epilepsy normalises the abnormally excited brain, and that this normalisation occurs soon after starting treatment. She has also shown that excitability of the cortex of the brain, or the ‘grey matter’, can vary with time of day and with sleep deprivation. The ability to predict a seizure could open the door to entirely new approaches to epilepsy.
Associate Professor Travis Beddoe
Monash University
Glycan specificity in bacterial pathogenesis and physiology
Associate Professor Travis Beddoe solves problems relating to how proteins function, with a particular emphasis on infection and immunity.
Travis developed specialist techniques to study a specific protein interaction that is central to infection and immunity. In 2008, he uncovered an example of a bacterium-causing disease in humans by targeting a molecule found in red meat and unpasteurised dairy. A toxin secreted by some strains of E.coli can cause disease by binding to a specific sugar that is found in these types of foods. These findings provided a molecular basis for the understanding of ‘hamburger disease’ and were published in Nature. Importantly, this work provides the basis for the development of anti-cancer drugs because of his observation that this molecule is present on the surface of some cancers. He completed his PhD in 2003 at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Kristy A. Brown
Prince Henry’s Institute
From Warburg to metformin: how oestrogens are regulated in obesity and breast cancer
Dr Kristy A. Brown explores the metabolic pathways that underpin the formation of tumours and obesity.
Kristy joined together pieces of seemingly disparate evidence and, using a commonly prescribed anti-diabetic drug, metformin, is targeting a particular metabolic pathway. This mechanism involves breast-specific oestrogens that act as key mediators of metabolism in obesity and breast cancer in post-menopausal women.
She hopes to show that use of this inexpensive, well-tested drug with few side effects could be used to prevent breast cancer. With more than half of the Australian female population now overweight or obese and at increased risk of developing breast cancer later in life, this research has the potential to impact many women’s lives. Kristy received her PhD in 2006 at the University of Montreal.
Dr Anselm Enders
John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU
Investigating B cell development and high-affinity antibody production by ENU mutagenesis
Dr Anselm Enders searches for new genes that regulate the immune system and is focussed on the development of B cells, the cells that make antibodies.
This doctor of medicine leads a complex genetic screening programme in identifying novel genes and pathways that regulate antibody production and B cells. Using his clinical collaborations in Australia and Europe, he has discovered a series of genes and mechanisms with important but unknown roles in immunity involving B cells.
The description of one of these pathways, which has just been published in Nature Immunology, is a novel B cell deficiency syndrome caused by a poorly understood class of proteins. These findings offer new opportunities towards understanding the regulation of normal and possibly abnormal B cells.
Dr Aleksandra Filipovska
Western Australian Institute for Medical Research
Regulation of gene expression in mitochondrial diseases
Dr Aleksandra Filipovska studies mitochondria and the diseases associated with these little cell powerhouses.
Since obtaining her PhD at the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2002, Aleksandra has studied gene mutations which lead to mitochondrial diseases. These diseases can affect the ability of a cell to generate energy, causing conditions that prevent babies from developing into adulthood.
Her work at Western Australian Institute for Medical Research using next generation sequencing technology has led to the mapping of human mitochondrial genes and their mutations. Publication of her results in Cell showed the significance and impact of her findings, and provides new information that might help in the development of drugs for this type of disease.
Dr Oliver Rackham
Western Australian Institute for Medical Research
Designer RNA-binding proteins: new tools for targeting gene expression
Dr Oliver Rackham creates cells with artificial genetic codes and engineers designer proteins.
Oliver completed his PhD at the University of Otago in 2003 and, following a period as a Fellow at CambridgeUniversity, joined Western Australian Institute for Medical Research where he programs cells to develop new functions, and engineers proteins for biotechnological and medical applications.
He recently unlocked a universal code for RNA-protein recognition, which featured in Nature Biotechnology, and developed a new technique that has allowed researchers to see the interactions between proteins and RNA in living cells for the first time. His work has seen him ‘hijack’ bacteria to make microscopic drug factories, which offer huge potential for making large quantities of drugs inexpensively.
Dr Mark Shackleton
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
The development of in vivo clonogenic assays for studying solid tissue biology in normal and neoplastic development
Dr Mark Shackleton unravels the complexities of human cancer while overcoming the challenge of working in vivo (in the body).
Mark has made two important contributions to medical research. Firstly, he developed a technique that changed the understanding of the normal development of epithelial tissues, where most human cancers develop. Secondly, he developed a highly efficient in vivo assay for studying human cell melanoma.
His research has implications for clinical management of melanoma as it suggests that a high proportion of cells must be eliminated in order to cure patients. His research has been published in high impact journals such as Nature and Cancer Cell. Mark completed his PhD in 2006 at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.
